On A Knife Edge
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: Wilson isn't convinced by House's double bluff to Chase, there is definately something wrong and he is determind to find out what! Of course he hadn't prepared himself for the truth - House's team were right and his best friend's liver really is failing!


**On A Knife Edge**

As Wilson made his way slowly along the corridor towards House's his office his head sank slightly in defeat as he observed the empty adjacent meeting room, and he scratched his forehead thoughtfully.

The lights were switched off and he could clearly see from through the partially drawn blinds that his friend's team had evidently returned home for the evening. The lamp was still switched off in House's office however and he could just about make out the stifled movements of his best friend from within, reflected in the low light radiating from the bulb upon his desk. He had just come from speaking to Chase, his heart now thumping inside his own aching chest – because unlike House's young colleague Wilson couldn't it be so easily fooled by his friends double bluff – and as he quietly entered House's office he found his friend exactly where he had almost expected him to be, curled up on his recliner but under a blanket and evidently still in discomfort despite what he had just said to Chase.

House looked up at him as he entered, and Wilson sighed.

"So," He wondered, trying to examine the motive behind his best friend's latest exploit, "You purposefully make your team believe that you want them to think that you're sick, just to prove to them that you're not in order to cover up the fact that your liver really might be failing?" He asked – but it was clearly more of a statement of fact than a question.

House simply looked back at him, dark eyes sunken and pale faced, and sighed.

"I'm not sick!" He protested as he pulled his knees up closer towards his torso until he was seated in a semi-foetal position, and omitted a shaky sigh as Wilson fixed him with an unwavering and serious expression.

"Yes, because you always see like that!" Wilson frowned, observing the unusual way House held both his knees, tightly pressed up against his body – a slight grimace every time he moved the only indication that he even registered the pain in his leg.

"My leg hurts!" He retorted defiantly through partially gritted teeth, refusing to admit defeat despite having been caught by Wilson with his guard down, and in such an obvious state of pain and discomfort he could hardly justifiably deny, but Wilson shook his head.

"No," the young oncologist reasoned. "If your leg hurt you wouldn't be sitting like that, the grimace on your face every time he move suggests that the way you are sitting is only making the pain worse, but your leg doesn't even appear to be bothering you, therefore the pain you are feeling now is already worse than the pain in your leg, and it's only going to get worse!"

House looked up at his friend with tired eyes, but he certainly didn't argue with his observations, or try to deny the validity of his statement. This was all the evidence Wilson needed to validate his concerns.

"Will you let me examined you?" He asked. "House if we're going to help you then I need to know what we might be dealing with."

House looked silently up at him for a moment, a deliberately awkward and defiant twinkle still in his eye, but after receiving no sarcastic retort from his friend Wilson began to wonder just how sick he might really be, and when he finally began to uncurl himself with some degree of difficulty without so much as even a word, Wilson began to worry.

"You understand how sick you might be?" Wilson asked as he bent down beside his friend.

House nodded, and with this Wilson took this as his cue to gently un-tuck House's shirt from his trousers, rolling the area of creased and crumpled material up towards his diaphragm, and began to gently palpate the surface of his friend's abdomen – feeling House's stomach muscles tense painfully beneath his fingers as with a sinking feeling in the pit of his own stomach it didn't take him long to locate the other man's distended liver and the source of his current discomfort, but when he looked back up at his friend very little of the pain he must have been in was registered upon House's worn and tired face.

Wilson sighed.

"This is bad House," He explained, "Your liver is definitely enlarged." As he spoke he carefully tucked House's shirt back into his trouser leg and replaced the blanket over his friend's contorted torso, leaning back gravely on his haunches once he had finally concluded his examination, "at least I've already scheduled to you that liver function test – it'll save you anymore unnecessary waiting... and we'll have to run some more tests to narrow down the exact cause of the swelling, I'll schedule an ultrasound and an MRI…"

With this House let out a muffled groan however, doing his best to stifle his cries as a fresh wave of pain washed over him – pain which he'd been doing his best to conceal from them all for the best part of the past few days, preferring instead to suffer in silence – and Wilson sighed.

"I'll start to you on a morphine drip for now, and stay here with you tonight. You've been popping vicodin like sugar pills for so long now who knows what damage he might have done. We can only hope is that we've caught this in time!"

"Thank you," House whispered, and when Wilson looked up at him again he noticed the sweat glistening upon his pale brow and beneath the unshaven stubble of his upper lip, and the tears shimmering in his bloodshot and sunken eyes, eyelids red and swollen.

"I would have told you eventually." House explained. "But I was afraid. The symptoms started a few weeks ago, and I'm not stupid, I knew then what they might mean. I'm not always necessarily going to be in my right mind, and best able to judge whether the decisions I make are the right ones for the patient. I had to know that my team were prepared to defy me, for the sake of the patient, if they sensed that the decisions I was making were wrong."

Wilson nodded – he could identify with that. He squeezed his friend's hand reassuringly, and was surprised when House latched on to his in response and refused to let go.

He was frightened, and Wilson smiled back at him meekly, in a well-meaning attempt to appear reassuring.

"I don't want to die Jimmy." The diagnostician whispered sadly, "but I don't want to be in pain, I don't want to be miserable."

"You can't always get what you want House." Wilson sighed wistfully, rubbing the back of his dry and calloused hand gently as he spoke. "All we can do is try and make the best of what life throws at us, in the time we are given."

House simply looked back at him blinking as he said this, a slight frown creasing the already deep lines etched into his wrinkled forehead, and a bemused expression set upon his dazed and slightly distant face.

"Are you alright?" Wilson frowned, concerned by his friend's seemingly depressed and unusually reflective state, but House simply nodded as he adopted his semi-foetal position of before and nestled further into his hospital blanket.

"I'll go and prepare you that morphine." The young oncologist sighed, carefully releasing his hand from House's steady grip.

As he got to his feet to go however House reached out to him one last time, grasping the slightly younger man by his shirt sleeve, and when Wilson turned around this time it was to see the slightly older doctor smiling gratefully up at him, a look of relief softening his somewhat haggard features.

"Thank you Jimmy." He croaked, in his usual hoarse, New Jersey accent. "I knew I could depend on you!"

Wilson forced a smile.

"Don't mention it." He sighed.

As he left House's office a few minutes later however Wilson realised that after so many years of using and abusing the drugs which in so many other ways had allowed the diagnostician to live his life, do his job, and manage his pain, House had very likely damaged his liver beyond repair. There were many reasons why his friend's liver might be enlarged, but given the doctor's previous track record and the sheer amount of prescription pain medication his body had been forced to utilise over the years none of them were good, and all of them would spell almost certain disaster for House. At the very least he would almost certainly need a new liver – a liver which at this particular stage in his life he didn't even qualify for – and if that were the case all the rest of them could do would be to find an alternative means of managing his pain.

But Wilson was by now an expert when it came to House and the subject of his pain – he'd sat up all night with him, called round to his apartment at all hours of the day and night, administered him with every manner of pain medication going at some point throughout the pair's long and somewhat turbulent, albeit close friendship, all too little or no avail. It seemed as though nothing could take House's chronic pain and suffering away, and the only thing that seemed to help had been the vicodin. It just broke Wilson's heart to think what those very pills might now have reduced his best friend to, possibly teetering on a knife edge between life and death.

He could only pray and hope against all odds that they had caught the onset of the damage in time.


End file.
